Donald Clark Plan B

What is Plan B? Not Plan A!

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Neophobia (fear of the new) - not new but it's damn annoying

I’ve delivered hundreds of talks on technology across the
globe over many years and there’s almost always that point where someone asks
the “but…. do you think that it’s destroying minds/culture/civilisation”. I often
wonder whether, at the pet-food conference on the other side of town, is full
of people who don’t like pets.

Neophobia is not new

Neophobia, fear of the new, is not new. No doubt some wag in
some cave was asking their kids to ‘put those axes away, they’ll be the death
of you’. From Socrates, who thought that writing was an ill-advised invention,
people have reacted with predictable horror to every piece of new technology
that hits the street. It happened with writing, parchments, books, printing,
newspapers, coffee houses, letters, telegraph, telephone, radio, film, TV,
railways, cars, jazz, rock n’ roll, rap, computers and now the internet and
especially social media. The idea that some new invention rots the mind,
devalues the culture, even destroys civilisation is an age-old phenomenon.

Neophobia

I’m with Stephen Pinker who sees neophobia as the product of
superficial reaction about cognition that conflates “content with process”. The
mind and human nature is not that malleable and obviouslyly not subject to any
real evolutionary change in such a short period of time (I say this as I’ve
heard the word ‘evolve’ in such questions). Sure the mind is plastic but not a
blank slate waiting to be filled out with content from the web. It is far more
likely that the neophobes themselves are unthinking victims of the familiar
destructive syndrome of neophobia, than our kids.

Neophobia as a brake
on progress

Thomas Kuhn and the evolutionist Wilson, saw neophobia as a
brake on human thinking and progress, as individuals and institutions tend to
work within paradigms, encouraging ‘groupthink’ which makes people irrationally
defensive and unsupportive of new ideas and technologies. As Bertrand Russell said,
“Every advance in civilisation was denounced as unnatural while it was recent”.
Religion, for example, has played a significant role in stalling scientific
discovery and progress, from the denial of the fact that the earth rotates
around the sun to the position of women in society and medical research.
Education is a case in point.

Neophobia as a
medical and social condition

Interestingly, the medical evidence suggests that neophobia,
as a medical condition, is commoner in the very young, especially with new
foods and then the elderly, who have deeply established habits or expectations
that they may see under threat. It fades throughout childhood and flips in
adolescence when the new is seen as risky and exciting. Then it gradually
returns, especially during parenthood, and into our old age. It is a cycle,
with parents bemoaning the lack of interest of their children in what they
enjoy, forgetting the fact that their parents had exactly the same reactions,
as did theirs. To see this as predictable neophobia, is the rational response.

Tool of our tools

Neophobia exaggerates the role of technology. Have we
‘become the tool of our tools’ as Thoreau would have us believe? There is
something in this, as recent research suggests that tool production in the
early evolution of our species played a significant role in cognitive development
and our adaptive advantage as a species. So far, so good. But far from shaping
minds, the more recent internet is largely being shaped by minds. Social media
has flourished in response to a human need for user-generated content, social
communication and sharing. Input devices have become increasingly sensitive to
human ergonomics and cognitive expectations, especially natural language
processing through voice.

That is not to say that what we use on the web is in some
way neutral. Jaron Lanier and others do expose the intrinsic ways software
shapes behaviour and outcomes. But it is not the invisible hand of the devil.
All technology has a downside. Cars kill, but no one is recommending that we
ban them.

The internet, as Pinker explains, is not fundamentally
changing ‘how we think’ in any deep sense. It is largely speeding up findings
answers to our questions through search, Wikipedia, YouTube etc., speeding up
communications through email, whatsapp, whatever. Speeding up commerce and
fundraising. It provides scale and everyone can benefit.

Social media

A particulary incisdious version of neophobia are those who
secretly use it but in public despise it. For years I’ve read dull journos andTV presenters decry social media, then seen them fall over each other to get
their ‘follower’ numbers up on twitter. The duplicity is astonishing. Rather
than see it as part of their profession, they saw it as the enemy – big
mistake.

There’s many types of the all-too-common, social medianeophobia. It’s usually a sneer. I’m OK with you not being on Facebook, I’m not
OK with you telling me an idiot because I am. First they often know nothing
about the medium, assume it has nothing but cat videos and don’t know about the
links, the chat fucntion and don’t really know that the Wikipedia they so often
use was crowdsourced. Second, the lurkers who sneer but always seem to know
what you’ve posted. What’s wrong with these people? I don’t mind lurking, I do
mind sneering lurkers.

Conclusion

We have the late, great Douglas Adams to thank for this
stunning set of observations:

1) Everything that’s already in the
world when you’re born is just normal;

2) Anything that gets invented between
then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with
any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after
you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the
end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years
when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Must watch freakout: 10 reasons why Facebook is good for Oculus Rift

That was my sister!
Now we’ve seen Tron, The Matrix and Minority Report. But
nothing, absolutely nothing in the cinema matches the actual experience of
virtual reality. When I first slipped the Oculus Rift over my head, even though
it was a development kit it was such a blast, such a mind-altering experience.
It blew my mind. I knew then, that it could shift consciousness sand that its
potential in education, which is all about cognitive change, was immense.

Rarely do you come across a piece of tech that you try once and
you know that it will create radical change. That’s what makes this different. VR
is not a gadget it is a medium. It’s moving from 2D to 3D, literally and extra
dimension to your mind. I showed it to everyone I could muster, at conferences,
to companies, at home, at parties, at a nightclub. I even took it to Africa.
Eventually I found funding for two educational simulations in social care and
retail. But there’s a story to tell here.

Mr Luckey

VR goes back to the 50s and 60s and had a rollercoaster ride
for several decades in adventurous, but expensive, applications in the
military, health, gaming and the arts. So Palmer Luckey, Mr Oculus Rift, joined
in at the end of a long journey by researchers and pioneers in VR. He’s honest
about this. What he did was immerse himself in that stuff. He worked with
explorers, like Skip Rizzo and Mark Bolas, just two of many people who
experimented and pushed the technology forward bit by bit. But it was Palmer
who had the focus, drive and foresight to make it happen technically and
commercially.

Good timing

Technology leaps are rarely single pieces of technology. They
use a number of past technologies to create a breakthrough. This happened with
printing, where the screw press, new inks, casting techniques and moveable
type, along with papare, became the print revolution. More recently, the
smartphone is an assembly of technologies, screens, sensors, processors and
batteries, that made them fly off the shelves. When the technologies all work and
the prices are right, you have a volume product. They are ensembles of tech and
it was Luckey who brought together a suit of smart sensors, cheap screens,
optics, processing power and software to get the potential price down to a few
hundred of dollars. To get to presence, the feeling that you really are in
another place, you have to tick off a long list of technical and psychological
problems. Then there’s the graphics cards, 3D graphics packages and skills in
building 3D worlds that have emerged to feed the games, movies, TV and other
worlds. This needs lots of smart people. Oculus assembled those people and had
the money and focus to get it done. This was never possible in a research lab, this
attitude – focus and speed.

What’s also new is that Palmer Luckey had Kickstarter at his
fingertips. That meant quick money. Traditional investment cash suffers from
lag. They often lack vision and the adventurous enthusiasm for tech that you
need for a tech-driven project like this. After a $2.4 m cash pull from
Kickstarter, came the smart move of distributing affordable and not half bad,
developer kits. This created a shitstorm of YouTube, blogger, tech tester and
social media splurge. Demand came from this network, not a corporate marketing
team or professional launch. Almost every gamer or tech-savvy kid knows about
Oculus, although most have never tried one. Demand is already massive.

Zuckerberg arrives

Then, out of the blue, I read that Facebook had bought
Oculus Rift for a cool $2 billion. Remember, this device hadn’t been launched
and has no user base. It’s a prototype. So why buy a piece of kit that has been
around since the 1950s with not a single customer? Well, they saw what I saw
and when a prototype changes your consciousness and literally allows you to see
the future, it’s time to slap the cash on the table. Zuckerberg’s opening
statement impressed me, “Imagine enjoying courtside seat at a game, studying in
a classroom of students and teachers all over the world, or consulting with a
doctor face-to-face – just by putting goggles on in your home.” He gets it.
This is not just a games’ peripheral, it’s a game changer; in education, health
and entertainment.

Why Facebook is a
good partner

1. Missing link

There’s a missing link in this story - Cory Ondrejka -the guy behind Second Life. Guess what, he’s
now Head of Engineering at Facebook. It was Cory who got Zuckerberg hooked.
Remember, at Facebook it’s still a tech-obsessed guy who runs the company, not
some MBA clone. They tried, it, loved it and they bought it. This was a tech to
tech sale – no suits involved. It was that simple.

2. Shock &
awesome

It’s not like buying a population of users. This is pure
tech. Nobody has used it except a bunch of developers on the DK1. It’s driven
by the pure ‘awe’ factor. Try this thing. For once the word ‘Awesome!’ is not
hyperbolic. I’ve demoed this kit to hundreds of people in many countries,
including Africa, and the reaction has been, well, awesome. This was a sale
based on actual experience of the product.

3. Game changer not
games peripheral

It won’t be funnelled into the pure ‘gaming’ world. Facebook
are not a gaming company and have a wider field of view. They see education,
health and social media as major markets. Sony, it’s main, and only real
competitor (at present) is really aiming at the games’ market. They have the
PS4 and future consoles in mind. In fact, Morpheus only works with a PS4.
That’s their game. I’m not criticising that, just saying that Facebook are
playing an entirely different game.

4. Brave new worlds

VR is about creating and entering new worlds, some will be
closed but the real prize are more open worlds where you can meet others, new
forms of world building. It’s this sort of vision we need, not the Microsoft
vision for Kinect (basically low-level gaming) or Apple gadgetry. The only
other company that could have been a contender here was Google. Bu they’re a
platform company. In my view they missed the boat.

5. Head start

Facebook had the vision to create the largest alternative
world we’ve ever seen, inhabited by over 1.5 billion people. That’s one hell of
an existing market. If anyone can make this fly on this scale, it’s Zuckerberg.
He has a head start – 1.5 billion eyeballs. Of course, it’s also a hedge
against seepage, competitors, even disillusionment with Facebook itself. At
some point it will be challenged and they need to move it to higher ground to
defend itself.

6. $2 billion

$2 billion is a lot of cash. It will accelerate research,
recruitment and production. This means getting to market quicker with a product
that is cheap, as it has a greater chance of getting massive volume sales. When
you can sell tens, even hundreds of millions of these things, then £2 billion looks
reasonable.

7. Consumer company

This is a consumer company, driven by the user experience
and the experience is mind blowing. It moves us on into visual and aural worlds
not the world of text and 2D snaps. Facebook is driven by users and their
created content. This is what the Oculus promises, worlds created by and shared
by millions of people. It’s about the opportunity to create things that you
will be gagging to experience. For some, who have never seen VR before, it’s
almost a life changing experience, the idea that you can enter another world
and feel as though you really are there and that it really can induce intense
emotions and sensations. Presence is about being there, not just seeing
something. There’s a world of difference between seeing and being. As a
transformative experience, it is compelling.

8. Not traditional
media

This is way beyond those media folks trapped in 2D. You can
buy as many big screen TVs as you want, even a hokey 3D one. You can go to the
cinema to get a pseudo-immersive experience on an even bigger screen. This is
just upgrading through bigger and bigger screens. The Oculus leap is to wrap a
screen around the back of your head, above and below, put you right inside any
created world. That’s a breakthrough. Gamers get it, those that have tried the
Oculus get it – traditional media companies don’t. It’s just another slot in
their TV shows about gadgets. That’s why a traditional media company couldn’t
handle an Oculus acquisition.

9. We live in a 3D
world, not 2D

Education is a 2D affair. Teaching is 2D subjects taught
using 2D materials, hence the focus on the academic, at the expense of the
vocational. And we wonder why graduates and school leavers are ill-prepared for
the real word – they haven’t been taught about the real world, only a 2D
representation of that world. Education, at last, has an affordable medium in
which any world can be represented and where we can, as the psychology of
learning tells us we should, learn by doing. This leap from 2D to 3D is to
literally add a new dimension to our experience.

10. More than mimicry

This is not mimicry. It’s not about copying the real world,
although that is useful in itself. What really matters is the ability to go
beyond the real. It started in flights sims, where you can repeatedly
experience things you are unlikely to experience in real life, but need to
know, for example repeatedly crashing the plane. It’s about doing the
dangerous, even impossible. Going down to the molecular level, into space, into
psychological realms, even different, induced brain states. It’s aesthetic and
artistic experiences you’ve never had. It’s high-end training in surgery
simulations. It’s prototyping almost anything you buy. It’s travel to places
you’ve never seen and may never see for real. See yourself and experience what
it’s like to be another gender, race or age. It’s just so damn different.

Downsides

Before I get flooded with complaints about Facebook and
privacy, let me anticipate an answer. I’m not one of those people who see
Facebook as a totalitarian monster. I’ve spent years in their world, for free,
and am OK with them knowing something about me. They’ve given me renewed
friendships with people I knew decades ago, new friends around the world, tons
of great content, work, rip-roaring debate, entertainment and a whole load of
stuff that has widened my knowledge of the world and others. That, for me, is a
fair trade. I ‘like’ Facebook and resent then sneering types, who have never
used it but think they know what it is, or use it, then use it to constantly
complain about it. If you don’t like the play – leave the theatre.

Leaving Facebook as evil totalitarian corporate aside, there
are several predictable risks that may befall this deal. First, in catching
this butterfly they may crush it. I don’t think this is likely as Cory Ondrejka
is leading the show and it is not in Facebook’s interest to blow $2 billion on
something they let be destroyed. Second, they may play the wrong game and force
everyone through some dystopian route. This I doubt as we’re not in some David
Eggers novel here. This is real cash and a real business. They want the Oculus
to enhance their business not make people hate them or leave Facebook.

Conclusion

Whatever
the outcome, I hope it succeeds. It was a bold move and I like boldness. I also
like the story, a long, hard trail of research and pioneering work, comes
together through a visionary and crowdsourced investment, taken to the whole
world through a social media company. I want us to escape from Disney, Time
Warner, Murdoch and all the other media companies that try social media and
tech, and usually fail. It’s time to move on and give the new kids on the media
block a chance.